ART CITIES: Seoul-Irreverent Forms

The exhibition “Irreverent Forms”  brings together Korean artists across three generations who defy the tradition of ceramics: Through clay—the most elemental artistic material—each artist embraces imperfection, fosters a spirit of experimentation, and explores ideas of inclusivity. The artists in the exhibition embrace the inherent chance, fracture, and cyclical nature of ceramics to contemplate destruction and repair, and ultimately the “recovery” of art and society.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gladstone Gallery Arhive

The works gathered in “Irreverent Forms” reveal what finished objects so often conceal: the vulnerability of matter itself. Across sculpture, installation, and video, clay is subjected to processes that emphasize contingency rather than control—the kiln’s unpredictable transformations, the erosive force of water, and the critical moments when cracks, collapses, and flows emerge. In doing so, the exhibition resists the historical ideals of ceramics, long associated with completeness and perfection. The poised curves of a moon jar, its upright silhouette, and its hardened, fire-tempered surface have traditionally stood as emblems of ceramic mastery. Here, however, imperfection is not treated as failure but rearticulated as a language of renewal, grounded in the poetics of making.

At the center of this inquiry is Hun-Chung Lee, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice extends beyond the limits of clay into design, architecture, and installation. Drawing on motifs from furniture and built structures, Lee deliberately disrupts symmetry and stability. His video work “Untitled” (2023) presents a single-channel projection of a clay moon jar slowly disintegrating in water. As the vessel dissolves, its iconic form gives way to sediment and suspension, becoming a quiet but powerful metaphor for the cyclical fragility of human life. The work reframes dissolution not as loss, but as a return to process—an unfolding rather than an end.

Lee’s sculptural works further integrate traditional ceramic techniques with a contemporary sculptural language. Embracing yohen—the spontaneous transformations that occur within the kiln—he foregrounds chance as a collaborator. Glaze flows, firing marks, and material distortions record the dialogue between artistic intention and natural forces. Under the recurring theme of “journey,” Lee’s practice examines how form, material, and experience shape our perception of beauty, proposing that aesthetics emerge not from resolution, but from movement and transformation.

Juree Kim’s contributions deepen this meditation on time, materiality, and impermanence. Through clay sculptures and installations, she explores the dualities of existence: permanence and transience, materiality and ephemerality. Her “Clay Tablet” series evokes both the linguistic origins of ancient Sumerian tablets and the geological forces that shape the Earth. Dispersed clay fragments, eroded and scattered by water, are pressed together by the artist’s hands and fired at high temperatures. Each tablet becomes a condensed trace of time and energy, leaving interpretive space for future viewers to project meaning onto its fractured surface.

Kim’s long-standing “Hwigyeong” series captures the vanishing landscapes of Seoul’s neighborhoods amid relentless urban redevelopment. Miniature architectural forms, sculpted from un-fired clay, recall the provisional structures of Korea’s rapid economic growth in the 1980s. In related installations, water is poured at the base of these fragile constructions, slowly dissolving them over time. The process mirrors the erosion of memory and place, reflecting on the vulnerability of the built environment and the impermanence of human presence within it. Kim’s immersive, mixed-media works function as temporal and spatial “stages,” inviting viewers into multisensory encounters with landscapes in flux.

Fragility is likewise central to the practice of Dan Kim, whose works challenge ceramic conventions through deliberate fracture and reconstruction. Treating ceramics as generative rather than static, Kim assembles shards and fragments through intuitive, additive processes that emphasize irregular rhythms, twisted planes, and layered geometries. In “Persona #2” (2021), a broken moon jar is reconstituted as a constellation of fragments. Displayed on the ground floor of the exhibition, the work reconstructs dignity through fragility, challenging the notion of a singular, normative wholeness embedded within Korean social frameworks.

Kim’s broader practice embraces broken scraps, dried surfaces, flowing pigments, and structural cracks as essential materials. Recent works incorporate mixed media to expand themes of gender, inclusivity, and diversity, introducing intentional ruptures within formal balance. These disruptions are not merely aesthetic gestures; they function as critiques of dominant cultural narratives. By collecting and reassembling marginalized elements, Kim proposes an ethics of inclusivity—one that finds harmony through fragmentation and articulates a distinctly queer aesthetic.

Together, the artists in “Irreverent Forms” redefine ceramics not as an art of perfected surfaces, but as an ongoing negotiation with vulnerability, chance, and change. Through erosion, fracture, and transformation, clay becomes a record of time and touch—a medium that insists on openness rather than closure. In rejecting the rhetoric of perfection, the exhibition offers a renewed understanding of beauty as something provisional, contingent, and profoundly alive.

Participating Artists: Hun-Chung Lee, Juree Kim, and Dan Kim

Photo: Hun-Chung Lee, Jar, 2025, Glazed ceramic, 21 ¼ x 12 in, 51 x 54 cm, Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol, © Hun-Chung Lee, Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery

Info: Gladstone Gallery, 760, Samseong-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea, Duration: 20/11/2025-3/1/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gladstonegallery.com/